Source: The New York Times
On August 6, 2000, The New York Times reported that "[n]early 10 years after many educators had written them off for dead, Roman Catholic schools in America are in the midst of an extraordinary revival. Enrollment is up across the nation. Hundreds of new schools have opened. And more than 40 percent of all Catholic elementary and secondary schools have waiting lists for admission...More remarkably, Catholic schools, once staffed primarily by nuns, priests and brothers from various religious orders, are nearly devoid of clerics -- reflecting the crash of vocations in the last 25 years as priests have become more urgently needed in the parishes. In the nation's Catholic schools, priests account for fewer than 1 percent of the 157,000 teachers. Ninety-three percent of the teachers are laity, while nuns make up 5.5 percent and brothers less than 1 percent...As the Roman collars and the black-and-white habits have disappeared from the halls, so too, has the overwhelmingly Catholic makeup of the typical student body. A record 13.4 percent of the 2.6 million students are non-Catholic -- more than four times the percentage of 30 years ago." Yet despite the lack of priests and the growing number of non-Catholic students, "if anything, the schools are more consciously Catholic now than they were a generation ago. Without nuns or priests to guide students, principals have tried to institutionalize Catholic education -- a tough act for the spiritual aspects. It is one thing to require all students to study theology, go on retreats and attend Mass four times a year -- as most Catholic secondary schools do. Putting down the cultural imprint is more difficult."